agrees with what the Messenger has reported, it is accepted; if they mean something contrary to it, it is rejected. Examples include the terms “composite,” “body,” “that which occupies space,” “substance,” “direction,” “accident,” and similar expressions, as well as “space” and the like. These expressions do not occur in the Quran and Sunnah with the meanings intended by those who employ this terminology. Nor do they carry these meanings in ordinary Arabic usage. Rather, these people alone use them to express meanings that others have not expressed in these terms. They then explain these meanings in other words and reject what the Quran establishes through rational and revealed proofs.

When clarification is sought and distinctions are drawn, truth becomes distinct from falsehood, and it becomes clear how their arguments should be addressed. Their arguments are pieced together from premises involving equivocal terms: they take an equivocal expression in one sense in one premise and in another sense in the other premise. In its verbal form, this appears to be a valid argument, but in meaning it is not.

It is like someone saying: “Suhayl (Canopus) is far from al-Thurayyā (the Pleiades); he cannot be joined to her or marry her.” Yet the poet who said:

“O you who give al-Thurayyā in marriage to Suhayl”

meant a woman named al-Thurayyā and a man named Suhayl. He then said:

“For Allah’s sake, how can the two ever meet?”